When Elon Musk took over Twitter, he said that "removing child exploitation is priority #1," but his whimsical management of the company saw the moderators responsible mostly fired and an increased prominence of such material on the site. The bad news for Twitter is that Australia is fining it for failing to cooperate with a probe into anti-child abuse practices. The good news for Twitter is that the fine is $386,000 and pocket change to its billionaire owners.
the fine is a reputational hit for a company that has seen a continuous revenue decline as advertisers cut spending on a platform that has stopped most content moderation and reinstated thousands of banned accounts… "If you've got answers to questions, if you're actually putting people, processes and technology in place to tackle illegal content at scale, and globally, and if it's your stated priority, it's pretty easy to say," Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in an interview.
"The only reason I can see to fail to answer important questions about illegal content and conduct happening on platforms would be if you don't have answers," added Inman Grant, who was a public policy director for X until 2016.
Someone asked why I'm still calling it Twitter, following its rebrand as "X". There are various reasons—Sears' naming rights lapsed on the skyscraper 20 years ago and I still don't hear anyone calling it "Willis Tower"—but the ongoing clincher is that it'll be Twitter again when he sells it.
